Jewellery retailer Senco and luxury timepiece retailer Ethos are planning to launch initial public offers worth Rs 500 crore each as early as January 2022, the Economic Times mentioned in a report citing people familiar with the matter.
Ethos is an authorised retailer for several Swiss watch brands such as Rolex, Omega, Tag Heuer, Favre-Leuba and IWC. It is working with investment banks Emkay Global and Incred Capital for its IPO. Senco is working with IIFL.
The two companies are backed by Ravi Adusumalli’s Elevation Capital, which was formerly known as SAIF Partners, an abbreviation for SoftBank Asia Infrastructure Fund. SAIF Partners was one of the first investee entities in India for the Japanese investment behemoth.
According to the financial daily, Elevation Capital had bought 10% stake in Ethos’s parent company KDDL in 2014 while in Senco it bought a stake in 2015.
Ethos has around 50 stores pan India and Senco has 100 stores.
Senco had IPO plans in 2018 as well but shelved those. It is reviving an old plan now after having expanded its store presence across India. It was originally mainly an eastern India-based jeweller.
Ethos had revenues of around Rs 400 crore for the year ended 31 March 2021. Senco had sales of Rs 2,400 crore in 2020 as per details available with the registrar of companies.
Elevation Capital has investments in multiple Indian companies such as FirstCry, Swiggy, Paytm, Paytm Mall, Urban Company and Urban Ladder as per details available on its website.
Private equity funds and financial investors have looked to book profits by offloading stakes in privately held companies during the recent IPO boom.
The blockbuster IPO of food delivery app Zomato, which raised Rs 9,375 crore in July, set the stage for the frenzy in the primary markets. Info Edge, the largest investor in Zomato, sold some of its shares in that IPO.
Recently, ICICI Venture made a five-fold return on its investment in Go Fashion after the company sold shares in a Rs 1,000-crore IPO.
The IPO of Tega Industries, backed by TA Associates, was subscribed 200 times.
